in reply to pipe list open trouble?

That's a quirk of the open built-in: It forces scalar context on its second argument. 
open F, @ARGV;

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... is equivalent to ... 
open F, scalar(@ARGV);

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As a workaround you can use... 
my ($mode, @cmd) = @ARGV;
open F, $mode, @cmd or die ...;

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update: prototype shows it: 

$ perl -E 'say prototype(\*CORE::open)'
*;$@

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Re^2: pipe list open trouble?
by LanX (Saint) on Sep 30, 2014 at 14:46 UTC
    Good example why the use of $ prototypes is usually discouraged. :)

    Cheers Rolf

    (addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)

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[d/l]
      Technically, prototypes are not involved here.

      The way open arguments are parsed is hard-coded inside the Perl grammar and the prototype(\*CORE::...) construction is just a facade.

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